Here's my basic sauce, taken primarily from Rao's on the Upper East Side, in Manhattan. This is best started early in the morning and simmered at an extremely low heat for hours during the day. Make extra, and freeze it; much better frankly than the bottled Rao's version, although that one is awfully good.

From their first cookbook:

“We use our tomato sauce on all kinds of pasta, as well as a major component in many other dishes. … The imported tomatoes that we use come flavored with basil (basilica), but we always add additional fresh basil for its pungent aroma and taste. In the early days, our sauce was made from fresh tomatoes in the summer and home canned in the winter. Today, I think nothing could be better than the canned, imported San Marzano tomatoes we use all year. The most important step is to clean the tomatoes of all skin and to remove the hard part of the core – this is what makes our sauce so smooth.”

1. Remove tomatoes from the can, reserving the juice in which they are packed. Using your hands, crush the tomatoes, gently remove and discard the hard core from the stem ends, and remove and discard any skin and tough membranes. Set aside.

2. Put oil in a large, nonreactive saucepan over medium-low heat. If using fatback, cut it into small pieces and add to the pan. Sauté for about 5 minutes or until all fat has been rendered. Remove and discard fatback. [I skip this step; just add a bit of EVOO -- used to use Italian, but I'm more and more taken with Spanish.]

3. Then add onion. Sauté for 3 minutes or until translucent and just beginning to brown. Stir in garlic and sauté for 30 seconds or until just softened (See note). Stir in tomatoes, reserved juice and salt. Raise heat and bring to a full boil. Immediately reduce heat to a very low simmer and cook for about an hour or until flavors have combined and sauce is slightly thickened. (If you prefer a thicker sauce, cook for an additional 15 minutes.) [If I have the time [i.e. have actually planned well enough] I simmer the sauce all day long at about 145F.

4. Stir in basil, oregano and pepper, and cook for an additional minute. Remove from heat and serve.

Notes: Take care when adding garlic to hot oil, as it will burn and turn bitter very quickly. If this happens, discard oil and vegetables and start again.

We never have sauce left over; however, if you do, store it tightly covered and refrigerated, for a day or two or freeze for up to three months. [When I make extra for freezing, I don’t follow Step 4 – I do that after thawing and warming up the sauce.]

This is my basic sauce. I like to make my sausage separately, and then add it and simmer it for an hour before serving. I do meatballs the same way -- add them and let them simmer for maybe two hours.

When I add meat, I like to make the sauce, then add the meat, then leave it in the fridge and reheat and simmer for a few minutes the next day.

This sauce works great on pizza -- make all the additions -- mushrooms, green pepper, sausage separately -- Janet's three favorites -- then add them to the sauce on the dough just before they all go into the oven.

I use it in many other combos -- this is just a basic tomato sauce with multiple uses.

Bob, I am going to go out on a limb here, and commit the cardinal sin of criticizing the venerated Rao's recipe.
I don't thing anything at all is gained from slow simmering a sauce that doesn't contain meat.
For me, a basic tomato sauce, such as the one you describe, performs many functions, and I think to show best, it needs to retain the clean, fresh tomato flavors, which I think are diminished by overcooking.
One of the best Italian chefs I've known, one who taught me plenty about cooking, showed me how he made his basic sauce.
He opened the can of tomatoes, and either hand crushed them, or whirled them briefly in a blender. He then put them in a sauce pan, off heat. He added some finely chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and a chiffonade of basil, and perhaps some fresh thyme. Finally, he drizzled a touch of xvoo into it. Then, he turned on low heat, and let the sauce come up to a simmer. As soon as it did, he shut the fire - that's it. This resulted in a lovely, fresh tasting tomato sauce that could be further incorporated into other dishes, or to top pasta.

I can understand slow simmering a meat sauce all day, for example, my Sunday gravy recipe I posted here some time back, or a proper Bolognese, but I fail to see what the long cook time does for simple tomato sauce.

John Tomasso wrote:For me, a basic tomato sauce, such as the one you describe, performs many functions, and I think to show best, it needs to retain the clean, fresh tomato flavors, which I think are diminished by overcooking.

Bravo, John. (In other words, I agree.) Marcella makes a similar point, as I recall. A Bolognese gains depth of character with hours of cooking, but simple tomato sauce? Fresh is best in my opinion.

We always make tomato season last through several months of the winter after tomato season ends by thawing frozen single-meal portions of fresh tomato sauce made just as simply as this: Take a bunch of tomatoes, cut them quickly into halves or quarters, and throw them in a large pot. Quarter an onion and peel garlic cloves and throw them in, too. Add bunches of fresh basil, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then cover, turn down heat, and simmer JUST until the tomatoes are cooked through, maybe 10 minutes at most. A few minutes longer than your friend's recipe, maybe, but not much. Run it through a food mill, working it and working it to get everything but the most intractible solids through. Use immediately over pasta, or decant into 8-ounce tubs and fill the freezer.

It's a great tomato sauce, and because it's so simple, you can use it as a base for a wide variety of preparations. I guess you could even thaw some and simmer it all day, if you wanted to.

As for fancier recipes, it's hellishly difficult to name one favorite. This is even worse than Jenise's evil question about "your one single most favorite pasta shape."

But you could certainly use this sauce as the base for one very strong contender in my house: bucatini all'Amatriciana. Even if you have to substitute pancetta for the traditional guanciale.

Oh yeah, to get back to the original question, it is terribly difficult to pick one, but if pressed into a corner, I think I would select aglia olio. When I am out of ideas, when the cupboard is bare, I can always make a satisfying meal out of spaghetti aglia olio, a frittata, a salad, and a glass or two of wine.

Mine is simple enough - xvoo, the better the quality, the better the finished result. Crushed red chili flakes, plenty of thinly sliced garlic, and an anchovy filet or two, mashed up into the hot oil.

Spaghetti cooked in water that has been well salted. I always reserve some of the pasta cooking water and add it to the oil, as I prefer a wetter dish. Sometimes I sprinkle bread crumbs into the oil and toast them, but more often I skip that. To elevate the dish, some shaved bottarga over the top - though I seldom have it on hand.

Top the spaghetti with the flavored oil, sprinkle with some fresh parsley, and call it a day.

Saute onions and garlic untill translucent. Combine with rest of ingrediants in a large sauce pan and heat to a simmer over medium heat. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 1 hour. Serve.

I find that if I cook it much more than an hour, the tomatos begin to loose their fresh flavor, but if I don't cook it at for at least 50 minutes the diced tomatos don't break down enough and the sauce is too soupy.

John Tomasso wrote:Bob, I am going to go out on a limb here, and commit the cardinal sin of criticizing the venerated Rao's recipe. I don't thing anything at all is gained from slow simmering a sauce that doesn't contain meat.For me, a basic tomato sauce, such as the one you describe, performs many functions, and I think to show best, it needs to retain the clean, fresh tomato flavors, which I think are diminished by overcooking.One of the best Italian chefs I've known, one who taught me plenty about cooking, showed me how he made his basic sauce.He opened the can of tomatoes, and either hand crushed them, or whirled them briefly in a blender. He then put them in a sauce pan, off heat. He added some finely chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and a chiffonade of basil, and perhaps some fresh thyme. Finally, he drizzled a touch of xvoo into it. Then, he turned on low heat, and let the sauce come up to a simmer. As soon as it did, he shut the fire - that's it. This resulted in a lovely, fresh tasting tomato sauce that could be further incorporated into other dishes, or to top pasta.

I can understand slow simmering a meat sauce all day, for example, my Sunday gravy recipe I posted here some time back, or a proper Bolognese, but I fail to see what the long cook time does for simple tomato sauce.

I'm definitely with you on this one. If I make my basic tomato sauce (in which I include carrots for sweetness) I only simmer it until the carrots are soft. Then puree it. With no carrots an even shorter time. Not much more than when it comes up to heat.

Carl Eppig (Middleton, NH wrote:Craig Claiborne's "The New York Times International Cookbook."

I loved that book and pretty much wore it out, years ago, jokingly calling it "The Upper East Side Joy of Cooking."

Man, oh, man, though ... reading that recipe really reveals how '70s that book is, and how dated it has become. "Port or other red wine"? Lawry's Seasoning Salt? Garlic powder? We've come a long way, baby ...

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in large non-stick frypan. Sauté mushrooms until tender and any liquid has evaporated for pan; set aside. Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter in same frypan. Sauté chicken breasts on both sides until golden brown and cooked through; remove from pan; set aside. Add onions to pan; sauté until tender. Add water, wine and bouillon mix to pan, bring to boil. Cook and stir until mixture is reduced by half. Add cream to pan. Cook and stir until slightly thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste. Return mushrooms and chicken to sauce in pan. reheat to serving temperature.
Serve over pasta (angel hair, spaghetti or linguini).
Accompany with the same wine used to cook with.
Makes 4 to 6 servings.

If you meant only tomato sauce recipes, I prefer the high acid variety achieved by minimal cooking of the tomatoes as already mentioned. The long simmered sauces I prefer in the winter when other ingredients deepen the flavor and offset the sweetness of long cooked tomatoes.

However, if you mean pasta sauce, in general, I would have to vote for the in season vegetable sauces. Right now cauliflower is peaking and roasted cauliflower/garlic sauce with campanelle is great. Also in my market is great rapini - makes a great sauce with garlic, hot pepper and sausage for orichiette.

Fonduta. It's particularly good with rigatoni or other tubes. Basically, it's a bechamel with grated Fontina mixed in at the end, off the heat. I usually season with a bit of nutmeg in addition to salt and pepper.

Stuart Yaniger wrote:Fonduta. It's particularly good with rigatoni or other tubes. Basically, it's a bechamel with grated Fontina mixed in at the end, off the heat. I usually season with a bit of nutmeg in addition to salt and pepper.

I agree with John Tomasso that for a simple marinara, less cooking is better. But I add the minced or sliced garlic to hot olive oil first, to release the aromatic compounds in garlic. Then I add the tomatoes (either fresh chopped or pureed and milled to remove skins and seeds). I add salt and pepper and basil. I taste. Sometimes a quick heat is all that is needed. Sometimes the water content requires reducing until the concentration is right for the pasta.

I also make uncooked "sauce" when the tomatoes are so fresh and sweet that cooking is not needed. Diced tomatoes, minced garlic, salt, pepper and EVOO are mixed in a bowl and macerate for 30-45 minutes. I cook the pasta, toss with the tomatoes and serve.

I have so many tomatoes that I have to can. I make marinara, like above, but cooked longer so I can freeze it. I can the skined tomatoes, seasoned just with salt and basil, then cooked in a water bath to sanitize and vacuum seal.

1. Give the tomatoes a quick whirl in the blender or squish them with a potato masher, leaving some chunks, and heaven forbid you should make any foam. (This foamy stuff made with a boat motor doesn't reflect well what I know and love.)

2. Sweat the garlic in the olive oil until it just, just starts to brown.

3. Add tomato paste and let cook for a couple of minutes.

4. Throw in everything else and salt and pepper to taste.

5. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer (blup, blup, blup) for about an hour, stirring frequently.

If I want to add fresh Italian, flat leaf parsely and basil, I toss them in about 5 minutes before serving.

When I have time, I will add one tomato can full of water to the mix and let it all reduce back to the level at which there was no water. This might take 2 or 3 hours, but it makes a gravy with a more homogenous character.

If I'm making a meat sauce, I simply brown the meat quickly and leave it pretty raw on the inside. Set it aside, make the gravy as above, adding the olive oil to the fond, and then put the meat in for about the last 20 minutes of the simmer. It's like making good hot dogs. You don't boil 'em. You just let them heat through.

Better than cooking a meat sauce to death is simply taking it off the heat and letting it meditate overnight in the fridge. In fact, I usually make my gravy with meat the day before. The best results come from a mix of meats, i.e. meatballs, sausage, and pork ribs all in the same pot. Chicken is better alone. Braciole need to be braised.

Every so often I hit my head and make a mire poix to start the recipe with, about one cup each of finely diced onion, carrot, and celery. To that, I add the garlic. This sweetens thing up a bit and gets that "it's in there" reaction from the public at large.

Sauces made from fresh tomatoes or canned ones which are only tossed in hot oil are a whole different condimento and definitely not to be sneezed at, but gravy is like wine. We always tried to balance the tomato's acid with its natural sweetness (hence all the cooking).

Cook the meat in a large, high-sided skillet and drain excess juices. Season meat with salt and pepper. Add in undrained tomatoes and seasonings [a little at a time...taste, then re-season; repeat as desired] add w/sauce and Crystal sauce. In a separate pan, sauté garlic in olive oil until ever so lightly browned. Pour contents into the mix, bring to a simmer, turn the heat down to low then cover [with the lid slighly cocked]. Stir and re-season often.

Usually after about an hour and a half, I start up the pasta. Cook until slightly firm [aldente] drain and add a bit of olive oil.

Serve pasta on individual plates then ladle out the sauce on top. Grate fresh hard romano cheese over the top.

Serve with fresh garlic bread, a tossed green salad [Newman's Own dressing, Family Style, of course] and the "House Specialty": Zinfandel or Syrah.

Bon Appétit

Last edited by TimMc on Mon Nov 20, 2006 11:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.